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Carl Malamud on “All The Government’s Information”
Here is another video for your "lunchtime listen." All The Government's Information, Carl Malamud, A Google Tech Talk, (51 min video) May 24, 2006. Carl Malamud was instrumental in getting the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to make its data available through the EDGAR database. In this "Tech Talk" at Google headquarters, he talks about putting SEC data on the web, the Smithsonian/Showtime deal, disappearing information and much more. Carl's latest goal is to put video of Congressional Hearings online. He's succeeding. See: Welcome to Report to the Congress: Congressional Hearings Online and Hi-res video from hearings now available. Carl says, "As an individual you can actually change the way government does things... Sometimes it is hard, sometimes they really don't want to do it and they go kicking and screaming, but that's kind of the business I've been in for the last ten years." Wouldn't it be nice if libraries pushed government as hard as Carl does? Continue reading
Smithsonian Image Claims Challenged
Carl Malamud has challenged Smithsonian Institution restrictions on use of the images at the Smithsonian Images website. The Associated Press reported today on the action by Malamud's Public.Resource.Org site. Continue reading
Malamud Challenges C-SPAN
In an email (27 Feb 2007) to Brian Lamb of C-SPAN, Carl Malamud proposes to purchase from the C-Span store its entire inventory of 6,251 videos of congressional hearings "for the purpose of ripping and posting on the Internet in a nonproprietary format for reuse by anybody." Malamud says:
Holding congressional hearings hostage is not in keeping with your charter, and it is not in keeping with the spirit of that grand bargain you made with the American people. Please re-release this material back into the public domain where it came from so that it will continue to make our public civic life richer.
Malamud was instrumental in getting the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to make its data available through the EDGAR database.
More here:
- Internet Watchdog Picks A 'Fair Use' Fight With C-Span by Andrew Noyes, National Journal's Technology Daily, March 2, 2007 PM edition [subscription required]
William Patry, a senior copyright counsel for Google, said on his blog that "the very transparency in government C-Span purports to seek is antithetical to claims of ownership in the events as recorded." Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig said ... that as more takedown notices are ordered for video remixes of political events, an advocate is needed "to take the lead to assure that the Web can be used for politics (without the mess of copyright)." An Internet-led reform effort called The Open House Project also has taken an interest in the C-Span debate.Continue reading
Who Owns What C-Span Airs?
There have been a few stories recently about C-Span and whether or not its broadcasts are copyrighted. (See list at end of this post.) This started when Republicans claimed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi illegally posted C-Span video clips of House floor footage. Later, they withdrew that complaint after some clarification by C-Span of their policies. The clarifications led to more confusion, though. Now Nancy Scola has posted a very useful and clear article about the issue:
- Who Owns What C-Span Airs?, Nancy Scola, The OpenHouse Project, February 27th, 2007.
This kind of issue will undoubtedly continue to be important to the extent that privatization of government communication expands and private companies and politicians attempt to use "intellectual property" law to constrain access of public information to the public.
More:
- Congressional Video In Vogue, Tech Daily Dose, February 16, 2007.
- C-Span's IP Policies For Congress Called Inconsistent, by Andrew Noyes, National Journal's Technology Daily, Feb 16, 2007 PM edition, [subscription required]
- Which Videos Are Protected? Lawmakers Get a Lesson, by Noam Cohen, The New York Times, February 26, 2007.
- MetaVid (a project which seeks to capture, stream, archive and facilitate real-time collective [re]mediation of legislative proceedings.)
- Ripping (off) the Congressional video record by Carl Malamud.
Hack the Government
Carl Malamud gave a talk at the 2006 OSCON (O'Reilly Open Source Convention) on "10 Government Hacks." He has posted his presentation materials as a series of 10 movies with textual commentary on the Internet Archive. He says he...
...whirled through 10 hacks in 15 minutes. I left myself 23 seconds to sum it up. The hacks all have a point, and that point is that government should be less about private interests and more about the public interest. The skills we use in the open source world are tools of civic engagement, tools of citizenship. And, if we apply those skills of engagement to our government, it is possible, at least sometimes, to drag the political system (kicking and screaming perhaps) towards the common good.
Here are links to each of the 10 with short annotations on a couple of my favorites:
- Hack 1: Be Media
- Hack 2: Get Standing (Somebody Sold the Attic)
- Hack 3: Be Government
- Hack 4: Adopt the FCC
- Hack 5: Enforce ODF By Proxy
In my world of vaporware hacks to government I'd love to see, I imagine a Firefox extension that detects any proprietary format in a .gov URL and talks to a backend proxy running tools like docvert to convert-on-the-fly and store the doc for the next user. Government rarely provides even minimal security (https URLs, MD5 signatures on documents, signed email, etc.., etc...), so one could add value to lots of government data by signing on their behalf. - Hack 6: Audit the Feds
- Hack 7: Link Check the Feds (Link Check the Mayor)
...periodically run a link checker against all the departments, then send the head of the agency a list with the number of broken links, ranked by department. Oh, and send a copy of the list to the chairman of the congressional oversight committee. And to each department head in the agency so the ones on the top can have something to chat about with the ones on the bottom while they're on the golf course. This hack works at any level of government. For example, link check your city government and send the results to your local newspaper. Pick a slow news day and your ranking will probably even make the evening news. - Hack 8: Annotate Hearings
...take the time to watch a hearing and blog the good parts, it definitely gets the word out. For this hack, adopt a committee or an issue, and make a habit of watching what they do and systematically annotating them. If nothing else, you help set the terms of the conversation. - Hack 9: Hold Hearings
- Hack 10: Map Spectrum (Summation)
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